Hello and welcome to episode 85 of the Penn Attic Podcast, a weekly show where we discuss pens, paper, any analog tools that we love so dearly, Penn Attic is a show on the Glorious 5x5 network. My name is Mike Hurley and I am joined by two people today again. They are both crazy kings of Kickstarter. Mr. Brad Dowdy and Mr. Dan Bishop. Hello, gentlemen. Hello, sir. How are you? Very well. How are you? Good. Dan, how are you? I'm good. I got an introduction, so I'm pretty good. Yeah. I think you're the king of Kickstarter. I'll be the prince or maybe the court jester or something like that. I like court jester. Well, good. I'm glad to have you on today. I know your latest Kickstarter project with Keras Customs, the ink fountain pen, is just awesome and we're going to talk about that a bunch today. I was excited to have you on to talk about this one because this one's been in the works for a while, so we'll get into all that here momentarily. But I know we got some follow-up items. What you got for us, Mike? It's the kind of neither of them are really follow-up as such. I think we might have some next week. I assume you've probably got your DDC factory floor. I do. Yeah, I don't have mine yet, so maybe we'll talk about those next week because I expect to have them. Did I say about how I kind of purchased it without sorting out international shipping? Did I tell you about that? Yeah. Yeah. You told me about that, I think, offline. I don't know that you told that on the show. Yeah, because basically, with the books, my mind is totally blanking right now. Basically, you ordered without added shipping kind of thing? Yes, exactly. And they. And what they do at Draplin is you, they don't really have international shipping options in the shipping information field. It's kind of US, it's free to US. And I saw afterwards that you kind of have to contact them first to get a shipping quote. So I basically sent them an email afterwards and Aaron Draplin was like, just send me 10 bucks and we're good. And I was like, that was just, I just went to mention that because it was kind of just like a perfect interaction with him. It was like, they've already been shipped, send me 10 bucks, 10 dollars and we're all good. I was like, yep, that's what we'll do buddy. So I've had an awesome mail week. I've received two very, very nice things from amazing listeners of the show. Now Brad was being a bit sneaky with me for a while, like he asked for my address a little while ago, stuff like that. And now I know why. So I have one pen, a new pen, and a, an answer to a question I had quite a while ago. So basically now I am the owner of a pelican, which is an amazing thing. Mr. Thomas Hall at TR Hall on Twitter had arranged via Brad to send me a pelican, which is an just an incredible gift to receive. Like I was kind of blown away by it. And I now have an M215 EF nib blue black, which apparently is no longer for sale as well, which is even, even sweeter. And yeah, I'm, I don't really know what to say about it. I was kind of blown away by it in all honesty because it was such an awesome gift to receive. And it's something that, you know, I've been wanting for a while. And now I don't have to spend my own money to get a pelican my own. Yeah. And I've been using it for a couple of days. And I've been, I've really been enjoying it actually. It's such a nice pen to look at. And it's really, it's built really, really well. The nib is actually fine. And it's maybe a little bit too fine for me. And I've been having sort of an inconsistent experience with like the paper that I'm using, which has also made me realize I think that there's something different about the paper in cold horizon field notes. I think it's more absorbent. Okay. And it might be because of the diet they've put in it or something. But it's also bleeding through more than, than my other field notes. Okay, I need to check that out. I'm, I keep saying I'm going to. Yeah, I like my open intestine. I would like if you could have a gun. This is totally anecdotal, but I've been using, I used the, what are the black ones called? Why do I keep forgetting? I don't know what's happening tonight. It's got her pitch black, pitch black, pitch black. So we've got pitch black and cold horizon. And I use them both for those today with the same pen. And it lays a totally different line, interesting on, on both. So I decided to maybe think about getting a new nib for my pelican. Sure. And I have gone and done that. Oh, look at you. I know this was Mr. Hall. He is, we have been conversing via email and he's been helping me out to make sure that, you know, he sort of, he was suggesting a few things to me. And he told me that he hadn't told told you and we were going to keep it a secret so you didn't know about it because of what I bought. So I bought a medium nib, but I bought a gold one. Nice. So I now have a, it's arrived, but I've not, I've not swapped the, the nibs over yet. So now I bought the M400 replacement 14 karat gold nib. Cool. Yeah, that's that. That's the nib I have. Well, I had a, you know, modified extra extra extra fine, but I think you're, you're going to like it. Those nibs are pretty great. And that's one of the great things about pelican is it takes about two seconds to swap a nib. It just unscrews right from the barrel. And you can go and, you know, do things like you just did switch from a steel nib. You know, it's not, you got to make sure that the 200 series and the 400 series are interchangeable. As far as nibs go, if you get into the larger sizes, of course, it's not going to work. But yeah, that's, that's easy to do. And cool. I'm glad you did that. I think you're going to, I think you're going to really like that. I'm interested to see if I like the medium, I bought mediums. I thought I'd go safe, but then the more I've been thinking, like, maybe I should have got fine. So I see. But there's always more nibs to buy. Exactly. Well, not at this price. Yeah, the gold ones are pretty expensive. Yeah, it was 64 pounds. So it's probably nearly $100. Yeah. So they're not cheap. But I've been told that the gold nibs are the ones to buy. Yeah, they're great. And listen, this pen, what we'll have to find a link to this pen. Actually, I've done a review of it that I don't think I've ever posted to show people a picture of this pen. What this one is, is this one, it's the 215. I think it's called, I don't know if it's called, I think it's called a blue stripe. It's called blue black. I've found an image. I've found a link and I put it in the show notes, which are five by five.TV slash panetic slash 85 85. What's different about it is it has vertical metal stripes in it. So it gives the pen, it gives the pen an awesome weight. Yeah, the weight is incredible. I've been so confused by it. Because it obviously has the plus is a plastic feel, but it's got weight to it. Yep. And obviously it's because you know, they're not just silver accents, they're actually pieces of metal. Yeah, it's like in life, I guess, is the one I'm looking for. The website actually says it has a metal body and cap, which have been lacquered. So maybe the whole thing's metal. But yeah, I am a big fan of it. And I'm really interested. I'm a big fan of Thomas Hall because he sent me one too. And he's a pretty amazing guy to just up and do that for for guys like us. That's pretty special to made a friendship like that and someone who you know, believes in what we're doing in and wants to, you know, share his share his bounty with us. It's pretty cool. But this week, so yes, thank you. Thank you, Thomas. It's been awesome. And also to have you help me with the nib buying has been really cool too. And he sent me some instructions on how to safely remove and replace the nib as well. But I've had a very emotional week in that regard because I received another gift. This one's been a long time coming, actually. I received a message on app.net. It was quite quite made many, many weeks ago, actually, I'm kind of taking a look now. So Christian Hesseman is at Hesse on app.net and Twitter. And he's, he's a podcaster himself. And he was kind of like, look, I want to send you a thing. He said, what tell me some colors that you like? So I told him to hold on like green and orange. And he said, look, you know, there are some other things that I need to ask you, but it will give it away. So either you like me, make decisions for you, or you find out what it is. And I was like, well, after, you know, doing the usual, because I can't, you know, I can't in good faith, just accept gifts from people after telling him that he really, really, really did not need to do it. It was a month ago, looking at the chat conversation. I kind of said, look, if you, if you're going to get me something, I like surprises. So, you know, you, you, if you listen to show, you know, I like to go for it. And then I received a package a couple of days ago. And it is a, the best way to describe this is it's like a, it's like a case, but also a personal organizer type deal. So what I have here is it's from, it's this is from a German company. Now, I'm going to butcher this, because I just, it's difficult right. The company is called Rotofardon, which is ROTER FADN. And this product, I believe is called Tashumbagliter. That's what this, this product is called TAS, C H E N B E G L E I T E R, which basically roughly trans translated is called pocket companion. And what this is, is it's kind of like a folio, right? As I remember, if you remember, I was talking many weeks ago about a case that I wanted for my iPad, that I wanted a folio case, which had space for, for notebooks and stuff in it. And that's kind of exactly what this is. So on the right hand side, I have my iPad is now in this case, and it's held in by like a elastic. And then there are these three like, um, clips, I guess, other way to put it that go run down the spine of the book of the spine of the folio. And on the left hand side, you have pockets. Now in these spines, you lift them up, and you can lay books down inside them and clip them in. So it's kind of like a, you would, you remember the Peli journal, where you would slide the books underneath the elastic, right? It's basically like that, but they're metal clasps instead. Right. So there's room for three notebooks inside this. There's three individual clasps. Yep. Exactly. That's, that's exactly it. Um, and so I, as well as this, um, and just, you know, I have, uh, my field notes in there. So they're sort of like hanging out in the pockets. And then I have what Christian also sent me was a couple of the notebooks that they make. Um, and he recommends the paper and the paper is very, very nice. I've not done sort of any, I haven't done a lot of testing on it, but it's very, very nice to find in pens actually. Um, and I also have a set of paper, uh, sorry, plastic wallets, you know, like little pocket, like document wallets. That comes in, comes with it as well. Um, so I clip those in so I can put my papers in here and it has two pen loops. Um, so I see one on the side, one on the bottom. Yes. And I have two because they're all custom made. Wow. So every single item is custom made. So I have a green lever exterior and an orange felt inside. Oh, cool. It's so awesome. Um, so yeah, you, you select everything and it's all custom made. And he even requested that the pen loops were larger than normal. So it fits both, um, I suppose be 540 in one of them and I have my, my Pelican in the other. And even more than all of this, this is, this was a really, really awesome gift that I've been using and loving actually. So if you take a look at these images and you think you want one and I don't know, I'm sure that they do ship abroad, but they're not cheap. Like it's really not cheap. And actually I can't, I have just seen the price for the first time and I, I'm now blown away because I didn't want to look and I've seen it and I can't believe he's done that for me. So thank you, Christian. But, um, he sent me a note. Like, so he basically, uh, took a couple of pages and wrote this really nice sort of letter. Um, and he was talking about how he found out about the show. Um, he had some, some sort of interest in pens, but he was looking for a new journal and system and he found our episode, um, on the bullet journal. Um, he thought that the idea of a pen show was ridiculous, but he liked us. So he then went and listened to all 81 episodes in one month. So, and I want to read this very quickly, because I think this is awesome. So previously to this, he had, uh, bought himself, he had one of these, uh, Tashenburg life. He had one of these anyway, and he was looking for a new journaling system to put his books in and he had a larmy, uh, multi pen. So after the one month of listening to our show, this is Christian's list of things that you now owns, which he's, uh, he's significant other now hates us for two pilot high tech C's, one Pentel Slichy, three, uh, pignon microns, one, um, adding profit pen. I don't know that one. Um, one pilot G2, a Monteverdi perquito, um, a Tombow, um, one Kuratoga, free autographic liners, um, a bunch of refills for his larmy, free larmy safaris, one larmy joy, one Parker frontier, a Colt pens mini fountain pen, one Twisby of Act 700, a Pelican M200 demonstrator, one pilot vanishing point, there's 23 bottles of ink and a gule pens ink job subscription. So we have converted yet another, um, normal human into a pen addict. And I wanted to just take some time because I thought it was an awesome thing to receive and it, and I love the product actually. It's really, really cool. Um, so yeah, thank you so much Christian for, for doing this. And he didn't ask for me to do this. He said I didn't even need to talk about it or ever mention it, but I wanted to because it, uh, it warmed him. I have had a warm heart the past couple of days because of those two gentlemen. I'll tell you that. That is awesome. Man, that, that's cool. I love seeing stuff like that, reading emails like that. Um, but like he said, I'm sure his, his wife, uh, hate us. We have a, we have a lot of, uh, we, as much love as we get, uh, there's, uh, there's a, there's some hate on the other side of the ledger for, for dipping into the, uh, the bank accounts sometimes, uh, too frequently, but yeah, it's all, all in good fun and we appreciate it. That's awesome. Yeah. And, uh, I've totally just like dominated the first 15 minutes of the show. Hi, Dan. Hi. So we're going to, we're going to talk about, um, that, that your new Kickstarter project. Um, but I think before we do that, I should probably, uh, thank cost sponsor for the show. Brad, do you have anything else that you want to talk about on this, this side of the show before, before I'm over? Nope. I think we're good. So let's take a quick moment to thank our fine friends over at Squarespace, the only one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own website. For a free trial and 10% off, go over to squarespace.com and use the offer code tallyho12. Squarespace is constantly updating their platform with new features, designs and more support. They have beautiful templates for you to start with and tons of style options for you to adjust. So you can really create your own space online. Squarespace takes care of hosting SEO and even make sure that your site automatically looks great on any device. It's incredibly easy to use, but if you need any help of a 70 Squarespace employees or on a customer care team, which is based in New York city. Squarespace also have two new brand new iOS apps for Squarespace customers. They have Squarespace blog, which lets you easily post, um, drafts and post straight to your site. You can schedule posts and review them to as well as monitoring and managing your comments all on your iPhone or iPad. Squarespace blog is fully and integrated with layout engine, allowing you to easily format text or markdown. You can tap and drag images around your post and modify detailed post settings on the go. They've also launched Squarespace metrics to allow you to monitor website analytics, page views and unique visitor information, as well as projections and charts for your website. They're all at your fingertips. They've also updated their note and portfolio apps for iOS 7, and they've also added some cool new features like audio collections for musicians. And if you use their comments platform and their shipping stuff, they have a new 3D visualizer for shipping information too, which is really, really cool. So as I said earlier, you can try Squarespace for free. No credit card needed to do that. And if you decide to purchase, it starts at just $8 a month and includes a domain name if you sign up for a year. Don't forget, you'll get 10% off and support the pan addict if you use the offer code tallyho12, T-A-L-L-Y-H-O-1-2. Thanks so much to Squarespace for the support of the pan addict and all the five by five. Awesome. Thank you, Squarespace. Thank you. So Mr Bishop, yes, how many cases of red bull do you have in your closet right now? Zero. Because you drank them all. I texted Brad right before the show and I said, I just drank an energy drink. This should be interesting because anybody who knows me, I'm what would politely be called a spaz. And I don't drink coffee. I don't usually do caffeine. And today, I was kind of feeling wound down. So I had an energy drink and everybody at work was looking at me like I was crazy because I was all spun out. But I think I'm okay. So, okay, good because you are, you're a quite a busy man these days. Before we, before we get into the ink, tell me about how wrapping up the render K, I mean, the render K, the retract project. I mean, you don't have to go into specifics. But that project just funded like two months ago and you've got everything shipped already. And yeah, I mean, it's pretty much you've gone right in from from the retract right into this ink. So tell me about, you know, the decision to kind of back these up together because I just look at it as like, man, I know how hard it was for me just to put together the kickstarter that Jeff and I did for Nog. And to run these, run these together, I think is borderline insanity. Well, the current one is our fourth. So I'm, I'm kind of, it's kind of old hat like I've been doing kickstarter almost on a daily basis since 2011. But you're right, you know, you get the project, you get it all wrapped up, you, you ship them all out and then you kind of breathe a sigh of relief, you know, everybody relaxes a bit. But then if if we had a small snafu with some of the pens, which is the absolute like worst case scenario, we shipped that up bunch of the pens and people were messaging us going, my pen doesn't work, my pen doesn't work. And you get this feeling in your, in your belly, like it just sinks. And what happened was during the polishing process, a little burr got rolled into the tip of the pen. And so we, we discovered the problem, we jumped on kickstarter and said, Hey, we know what's going on. We're going to set up a system. We'll exchange them out. No problem. And luckily it was, it was something that we could remedy pretty quickly. And we're still getting some people trickling in, but it had the potential to be really bad. And it wasn't luckily so. And then we started the ink. Yeah, well, I think the way, I think the way you jumped on that on the retract thing was was pretty awesome. I mean, y'all had that squared away, but like in about, I don't know, 24 hours or so about after people started getting their, their products and emailing y'all with questions, you had like a system set up for exchanges, replacements, you said, here's exactly what happened. Here's exactly what's going on. Here's exactly how to fix it. And it was all good from there. So I know that was probably stressful as I'll get out, but the way I thought the way y'all handled it was, was, was really good. Yeah, we, we really tried to, we tried to be transparent, you know, in our showing how they're made and everything else. And so there's no advantage to, to hiding information. So we just said, Hey, this happened, we'll fix it. And we're still, you know, getting an occasional person contacting us and we're, we're taking care of it. So awesome. So ink, a fountain pen and a roller ball option, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna keep calling it the fountain pen, because that's, that's the way I see it. I see it as a machine fountain pen by, by Karis Customs. So tell us how this really came about. I know you've been talking about doing this or wanted to do this for quite a while. So tell us about kind of the genesis and how you figured out the best way to kind of put this pen together. Let's see where to begin. After talking with every, I mean, it wasn't an, it was inevitable. I mean, just like you eventually moved into the world of fountain pens, a lot of people, if they appreciate pens, they seem to graduate towards fountain pens and being talking to you guys and people contacting us through Kickstarter or email, they said, Hey, hey, what about a fountain pen? What about a fountain pen? We want to see a fountain pen. So I started the process actually right after the render K, trying to find nibs and setting up sources for that stuff. And we found a few nibs through Schmidt that we liked and started designing around those. And I really just put my nose to the grindstone and, you know, pen to paper and started sketching. And I, for the first time, everyone was surprised. It was no knurling. Yeah. On the fountain pen. But it was a process that kind of began with, it's mostly aesthetics because figuring out how a nib is and we can fit inside a pen that fits inside a cap and all that stuff. That's, you know, that's kind of what I do at work. I mean, I do mechanical stuff all the time, but designing something that people, non fountain pen people would be drawn to and that fountain people wouldn't find to outlandish was, was the line that I had to walk. And most of it came down to the clip. Because on the ink, the clip design is completely different than other pens. We've actually used the same clip on our previous three pens. And I did a complete redesign. I wanted something completely new. And so I came up with the idea of the one piece, kind of one dimensional clip, fitted into a slot on the cap. And it turned out really, really nice, I think. I am really pleased with the overall aesthetic of the pen. Yeah, I think the looks are fantastic. The thing that I personally like the most and from when you even, you know, started showing me sketches way back in the day was just, I guess, the barrel silhouette, I guess, if you will, just the shape of the barrel is exactly like if I was designing a fountain pen, this is kind of my favorite barrel shape, if you will, to write with it slightly wider diameter, then you would think of a normal pen. And here you go, Mike. Oh, that was for you. Killing me. It's slightly wider in the middle than, you know, say like a Pelican M205 or whatever, it's just a straight, probably standard standard diameter barrel. This one kind of flares out just a little bit in the middle and tapers down towards the cap and tapers a little bit towards the front. I don't know, that's just a really good, good shape for me. I've, ever since I saw that first drawing of yours, I was like, I got to get one of these in my hands because I think it's going to be just right for what I like in a pen. And it really is, I like the feel of it. It's, you know, it's aluminum, so it's not overly heavy at all. It feels real bad. Yeah, I think you mean aluminum. Yeah, thank you. Say it right. I don't say it at all. It's aluminum, because you have one in hand, right? You're not just teasing everyone. You actually have one. Yeah, no, no, I have one. Yeah, Dan sent me a prototype. I got it on Friday. So I haven't had it too, too long, but I've been using it ever since. And, you know, I'm enjoying the writing experience with it. I like the section smooth. And, you know, we have a link to your blog posts you did, Dan, where you talk about designing the pen and taking it from sketch and everything. And I saw in one of the old pictures, which I haven't seen before, you shared some of some of them with me as the process was going through. But I did see one where you had an earling on the grip, on the grip section. Yes. And, but I think I think smooth is was the way to go with this. I think it just aesthetically, it probably wouldn't have looked right. But I think, no, I just could say this the section design is really good. It's a good comfortable comfortable writing pen. I just I just like how it fits in my hand. It's really good. Well, the funny thing about that grip section, when I was looking, because I mentioned, like you said, that blog post, there's not many machined fountain pens. I mean, there's very few. I mean, granted a lot of the other ones that are acrylic and things from machine, but there's not many metal pens. Now, the pen that kind of inspired the genesis of all this was the Nikaya. I think that's how you say it. They have a titanium piccolo, which is an awesome pen. And if you look up the that that pen, there was a lot of elements about it that I really liked. And the grip section has this tapered. The tape was towards the nib, but then it flares out with kind of a square collar. And my original design actually had that. And then we made it and I used it and it felt horrible. So I actually, you know, was a kind of an irritation to Josh in our shop because he was he was helping me with the prototypes. I said, I made a new design. This one's not going to work. And he's he looked at me like, are you kidding me? I have a bin full of parts that are the other shape. And we we remade them. And that means he had to remake them in the fountain pen configuration and the roller ball configuration and in copper brass and aluminum, you know, he had to redo them. And so, but in the end, this the shape of the grip section just kind of worked its way out. And everybody that has tried it, you know, has liked it. So I think it was a good decision to go with this more, I don't know what you would call it, voluptuous shape rather than the real squared off look. Now that I've never heard in the description of a fountain pen that it's voluptuous. The look of it is like it's kind of like larger than life. It's it's kind of bulky. I mean, a lot of the pens and here's during the process, like I said, I would send texts to Brad. I would I would send pictures to Mike and say, Hey, look, a weird bacon. He would send back responses and all caps and I was very cryptic. But I was also contacting Ed Jelly. And believe it or not, Mike Dudek, he I would have him come down and say, Hey, that new fountain pen that you have, can you bring it down here? I want to look at something. And so he actually helped me decide, you know, what style I want to do on certain things and what I did and didn't like, but it was also an excuse to go out and get hamburgers for lunch. So that was fun. But everybody gave really good feedback along the way. And it was it's always encouraging that when you come up with something and people go, Yeah, that looks good. Or that's a little, you know, that looks better. And so this was kind of a small community effort, whereas a lot of my pens in the in the past, I kind of designed them on my own. So this one, I have to thank everybody who, you know, participated or at least just ood and odd when I sent them stuff that made me feel encouraged to push forward. So see, I can't help but think then that you made this project for me. Oh, I did actually part of it. The rollerball functionality. Is that what you're talking about? Yeah, well, and the the the with the manufacturer of the nib as well, but yeah, go on. So talk about that. Because in case it's not clear from what we said before, it's basically one pen design, but you can either get it in a fountain pen or as a rollable, right? You can choose you can buy both, which what I've done. I want one of each. And you'll see everyone will see why in a mere matter of moments that they don't know already. But you can choose to have it in one or one or the other, because obviously they have different mechanisms and side sets of manufacturers, like differently is my understanding like the way that you would look in it like some of the designs, you can see how they slightly differ on the inside from what you're making. But say, please tell the people why this is this is the my project in that regard. Well, it's a little bit of ego, but it's also a little bit of can I do it? Because every time we talk about pens and there's, you know, wish lists or gift guides, Mr. Mike Hurley always says, I love the retro 51. I love that and understand that we saw. And so I did, I did a bit of digging. And I'm like, well, what about the pen makes it so fantastic? And in my opinion, it's the refill. Yes, 100%. Well, the pens are also very nice. I own a surf, you know, there's nothing wrong with those, but the refill is spectacular. And so I said, Hmm, can I make this pen take that refill? And I mean, so I, I did it. I just designed a different grip section. And it'll also take a Parker compatible refill. So someone likes a, like a space pen or, you know, or whatever else it will work too. But this was designed to work best with that very refill. Because I wanted to kind of displace the other pen on your list subconsciously. Yeah, see, I wonder, I'm, I mean, I obviously don't want to speak too soon. But I mean, it is all about that refill for me. Now, obviously, retro retro 51, they rebrand it. Mm hmm. That they call it like the retro, they call it the RAF 5P. For that, like the black version. But I mean, obviously, I've done some digging on it. And I know that the Schmidt P8261. 88126. 8126. That was from memory. All right. So you know, I maybe got one number off. It's the same. You call yourself a super fan. Oh, yeah. And yeah, so that, that refill, I think is, is absolutely perfect. And so to, I'm really interested as to use it in a, in a new, a new body. But I'm excited. I think, I feel like you've made a great decision and as well, because you also use Schmidt for the nib manufacturer, right? They make the, and I've used the tornado fountain pen, which is a Schmidt nib. Mm hmm. And that is also fantastic, one of my favorite fountain pens. So I mean, I think that you've definitely gone with the right decision. I'm really pleased that you're actually including, I'm right in thinking you're including the Schmidt refill, right? With the, with the pen? Yeah, the, for the roller ball, they get a refill and with the fountain, then they get the converter. Yeah. And I think that, especially the inclusion of the refill itself, rather than just saying it supports it is good, because I think it gives people a great experience out of the box, even though they can change it to their favorite. But it is a really special refill. And it has some special qualities to it too. And I think that it's, it's really good to give that to somebody for their first experience of the pen. If they go with the rollable version. Right. Yeah, I think I might have to eventually, I just backed, I backed the orange, of course, ink, but I might have to break down and get a roller ball too, just because I like that refill so much. And, and let's, let's talk about orange for a second. You did a couple different things with this project compared to some of the other, other Caris Customs Kickstarter projects. Yes. Yes. You did, you know, the, the, the Caris Customs MO in the past has been aluminium brass and copper barrels for the pens. And this time it's just stuck with the aluminum. And, but you have offered the anodizing up front this time, the colored anodizing, which you've always offered in the other pens after the fact. Yeah. You know, the, the render K, the bolt. Can you get, can you get the retract anodized yet? No. Okay. Is that going to be an option later? Or no? That might pose some issues. Yeah. Well, there's, I didn't think about that before I just asked it to you. No, that's fine. Yeah. The retract, we're looking at some different options. And, you know, we haven't talked about this before, but we're, we're playing around with some different configurations, possibly doing a, a two tone to kind of go for a more classic look instead of the whole thing, but yeah, like classic Parker Jotter look where they do all, all the separate looks. I think that's cool. Yeah. Kind of an homage to that, but the main reason being that you, you never know how popular something's going to be, especially off of Kickstarter. Mm hmm. Because the, the, the render K wasn't that popular for us after Kickstarter. I mean, it was gangbusters and then it just kind of crickets. So you don't want to immediately throw a bunch of stock into colors that kind of sit. Sure. We had an argument, not an argument, I guess, but when Bill and I talk about things, we, we're both kind of allowed people and everyone, the new guys, if a new guy walks in, from the shop walks in, he thinks we're like going to get into a fistfight, but it's just us being like boisterous about, about what we're talking about. And for example, we, the gold color on the anodize. It doesn't sell particularly well on certain items that we have. People just didn't buy it. And I wanted it for this, this project. And we'll see if I end up with, you know, egg on my face, but I, people, I think it looks really good on something like a fountain pen with a, like a silver grip section. So the color is, is something that you have to invest in, because if you want stock, you have to, you know, we're going to take 50 of these, we're going to take them to the anodizer and we're going to pay to have them done in gold. And if they just sit in a drawer, it's, it's kind of a bad thing. So it's kind of why we've, we've, in the past have delayed offering colors because we wanted to see if, if people were still interested in it after Kickstarter. Well, yeah, I'm super that that's my favorite thing that you did on this project was offered up that upfront, because always, you know, I, the render K, the orange render K I have is my single favorite Keras customs pen. And it's not, it's not close, honestly. And I think it's maybe because the orange and that plus I love the high tech sea refill. And that's the one I use the most. And, and that barrel, that barrel shape is actually kind of similar. It's a little bit narrower than, than the, than the ink. But, you know, also in this project, talk about how, you know, the different instead of doing the different barrel options in, in brass and copper, because that would probably get extremely heavy, they're heavy as it is in the, in the other pens. In this larger size pen, I'm assuming it's because of, of the weight where you've just decided to offer different sections and different, different materials. Yeah, a lot, a lot of it's the weight. In doing my research, personally, in reading and everything else, everybody talks about how light their pens are. It's almost like, in the, in the cycling world, these guys, you know, they take the road bikes and they buy, you know, titanium and carbon fiber that they make, they call them weight weenies. But, I can understand that if you have a pen that you want to use every day, you want it to be comfortable to write with. And so, for example, our, our bolt, a copper bolt, a lot of people don't like it because of its weight. Other people really love it. So, we've had a couple of backers on Kickstarter ask if we can do these in copper and brass and it's just not practical, weight-wise, I think. When you start getting into fountain pen territory, it changes quite significantly. Yeah, and I was concerned that you guys would maybe go for brass and copper with this project. I don't think it would work. No, the forebody, it would, and I think you would maybe run the risk of somebody who is maybe new to fountain pens would go for this. And that, that, the weighting really matters in a fountain pen. And I don't know why, but I know it matters to me. And I built, you know, talking to people that love this stuff, it seems to matter to everyone. Yeah. Something about, I don't know, maybe with, just because there's a difference in pressure that you have to apply to the nib and having a balance in the pen, that's make or break a lot of the time for me. And I know Brad that you're the same, right? Very much. Fantastic. And it can write really well. But if that weights off, sometimes it will take you two, three weeks, maybe a couple of months of using it, but you'll stop using it if the weight's wrong. Yeah. And it will just sort of grind down on you over time. Well, fountain pens, I mean, with a ball point, you know, you kind of push, you have to physically move that ball to, to get it to work, gels, not so much. But with a fountain pen, you're just kind of gliding that across the paper. Sure. And so if you have a really heavy pen, you're actually fighting gravity. So you're not putting a lot of pressure. Whereas with, like, a space pen refill, for example, you could let that pen and your hand put a lot of pressure down, and it's not a problem. And somebody who's left handed like yourself, if you've got a heavy fountain pen, it's going to want to dig as you're riding. It digs anyway. And so you're having to resist that weight. It's, it just, they would be beautiful. Don't get me wrong. I mean, can you imagine one of these pens and just solid copper? It would be, it would be gorgeous. But would you want to write with it? Maybe. But so we just kind of decided to get that, that, that flair to get that extra bit of, of material, that difference, we would offer the grip sections. And it turned out awesome. I mean, if you look at the red, the photo of the red pen with the copper grip section, it just, it looks great. Yeah, that's great. That's a great picture. So what's, what's, go ahead. Yeah, I was just going to say the one of the questions I had a couple of people asked me questions on Twitter, knowing that you were coming on. They wanted to know what's your favorite combination of color and grip section. Oh, let's see. I, I like contrast. So the, the black with like a copper or any of them really, the black pen shows off the, the brass and the copper really well. We have that picture of the black with the, the brass grip section. And it just kind of pops. But the, the color, the regular anodized, I don't know. That's like saying, which one of your kids do you love more? The, the gray, I think we actually don't have a photo of the gray up right now. I need to add one, but the gray with like a copper grip section just looks amazing. But I, I think any of the colors, like even the pink, I mean, I'm not like a huge pink guy, but when you see the pink with a stainless polished stainless clip, polished stainless screws, an aluminum grip section, and a, and a polished English nib that, that contrast just looks fantastic. Yeah, I never, looking at all these colors, I thought gray would have been about my fifth or sixth choice until I, you talked me into one, I was buying a render K for a gift and I wanted black and you were out of it and he said, you got to check out this gray one, you know, just trust me on this. Let me send you the gray one, check it out. And it is awesome looking color. It doesn't, the, the pictures don't even do it justice of how good looking that color is in, in person. So now that, that kind of leads to another question someone had, it might have been the same, same person who asked it, are you going to have the grip sections available for sale separately after Kickstarter? We, I've been asked that a bunch today answering questions on Kickstarter, but I think, I think so. As you know, the logistics of this project, one of the reasons we didn't do color in the past or just right up front is because essentially every order becomes a custom order. Like, I thought you were nuts for doing all these color ways. I'm like, well, you are out of your mind. I think I probably even told you not to do it. And I just kind of said, you know what, let's, let's do it because this is our first fountain pen. I was really happy with the design because we in the past, we'd anodized some samples of stuff like I have some, some retracts that are, are anodized on my desk and when you get it back and you see it and you just, I couldn't do that. I couldn't not offer the color. It's going to mean a whole bunch of work on the back end. And if people are wondering what I'm talking about, it's say, say somebody orders in the past, they order a render K. Well, they just get a silver render K. Well, now if somebody orders an ink, like a roller ball combo, so they get one fountain pen and one roller ball, when we send the survey out, they're going to be able to pick a color for each one of those. So that means that, you know, Joe, Joe, Joe Smith just decided he wants an orange fountain pen and, and a blue roller ball. That essentially makes every single one of those orders a custom order. I can't just box a thousand silver pens and then everybody who ordered a single silver pen, I just print out a thousand labels and stick them on. It's going to mean every single person gets that much more attention, which is, which is fine. It's just, it's a little more work on our end. Yeah, welcome to my world. But it's, it's cool. We couldn't have done it any other way. I don't think so. I'm pretty happy with how that turned out, but it is like a custom order for, for every person. But yeah, but I think it's cool to have those options there. And just, just so I give them credit, that was Brandon at UVA Wahoo 01 on the, he wanted to know what the best colors to complement the, the, the sections and the anodized colors. And Todd Crane wanted to know about the, selling the, the grips section. So I appreciate those questions. Now, let's, let's, let's, uh, let's bring this, this back around to, to the, to the launch of this project. And from, you know, at launch, what yesterday, Monday afternoon, um, yeah, Monday, Monday, noon, Arizona time, because everything obviously is, is based around me. Um, that's right. So, so how do you, how do you think it's going so far? How did the launch go for you? How do you think it's going where it's at right now? Just kind of give me, uh, your, your feelings, your warm fuzzies or your freakouts about, uh, how it's going so far. Oh, it's going terrible. No. It's absolutely horrible. No. So I was, I was an absolute wreck. Like I, if most people, if they don't know already, I'm, I'm pretty much like the Kickstarter guy at work. So if somebody writes a message or does whatever, I'm responding to them. So I, I might try to make sure everything's in place. You know, everything's, you know, that I, I, I cross my T's and dotted my eyes and everything else. And so we get ready to launch and our goal is, is higher than, than our other projects. I mean, $10,000 because of, of the, the way that we're going to make our clips is going to cost a little bit more. So we wanted a baseline because we, we really had no idea. This is new territory for me. I, I, I, you know, I wanted this to do well because our other pens have done well. So, um, it was at our highest goal and we had everything set and I hit launch at noon and for like two or three minutes, it was just crickets. And so I'm, I'm, I'm, I have an internal dialogue going and I'm, and I'm thinking, okay, it's, it's probably just Kickstarter, you know, getting it up on the server. And so I, I post the link to, to Facebook and I do some updates on our previous projects to let them know and I sent a link to, um, all of you that got prototype pens. And then suddenly the pledges start rolling in and I went, okay, okay, this is, this is going pretty good and I feel better about this. And within basically the first hour, we met our $10,000 goal. And I just kind of sat there dumbfounded because our fastest growing project to date had been the retract. And we, you know, in the first 12 hours or so, what we had done, you know, pretty well, I think we did like around $18,000 in the first 12 hours, but we ended up doing that much in like two and a half. Wow. And I, it's still obviously, you know, it's very rare that I'm speechless, but it's amazing. The people who have been behind us on this project, um, I got to give a, a, a mention to our friend Ivan over at Inktronics. Yes. He came by the shop, he was in town for, for work and he posted a picture on Instagram saying, Hey, I'm in Arizona or in Phoenix or whatever. And I said, Hey, you have to come by the shop. So we, we hung out and he tried the pen. And so he, he was my, was my official leak, um, on the fountain pen network. I sent him a few photos and he kind of didn't say where he got him or anything else. He, uh, he posted them and I had been, it was the first time we've leaked anything. Like, I started on my Instagram feed, uh, uh, for the month of October, the people do this thing called Inktober where they posted a drawing a day drawn with ink. And I, I had a few drawings I did with, with my prototype. And I would just screw the lid on and I'd set it to the side when I took the picture and people go, what is that? What is that pen? And I, and I, what are you talking about? So we, we just slowly leaked all these, these, these images. And I think I posted a photo where I, where the section in the, in the div was actually covered by the lid. So people wouldn't know what it was. And I think that was the most fun part is, um, like building people up to the eventual launch of the, of the project. Um, and it, it, uh, I don't know if that's, that's the case or if just, or fountain pens are just that much more popular than other pens are, but this response that we've, that we've had is just unreal. I mean, I checked the, the total right before we got on the show. And we were at about, uh, was it 42,000? You got, let me see. 41, 867 right now. Yeah. And, um, of course we have, uh, an awesome video. Oh my gosh. Yeah. We haven't even talked about that. Um, but yeah, it's, it's, it's, it feels good. I mean, when last, when you guys talked about it, when you posted the, uh, that photo of the, of the orange. Yeah. I was mad at you for keeping posting that picture out. Why? Why were you mad? Because I couldn't have it yet. No. Um, yeah, I don't know. This kind of the point is to make everybody jealous, but, um, no, um, that photo is awesome. That was taken by our, our in-house photographer, Tommy Coppinger. But, uh, yeah, it's, it's been nerve-wracking, but at the same time, it's been fun teasing everybody. Um, well, because we've never done it before. We, we never like leaked stuff or had anything for people to see to build this anticipation because when we did the render K, we were just some machine shop, like nobody, nobody knew who we were. We made some iPhone cases and had some success there, but pens, like we weren't even on the radar. I mean, uh, now some people know who we are, but it's, it's fun to kind of gain that reputation and to see people excited about your work. Yeah. Well, I, I think they're pretty excited about this one. The way, the way it's looking so far, it's, um, I'm, I'm excited about it. I'm, I'm excited to, uh, add more of these, uh, to, to my arsenal. I know Mike, Mike went for the, the full package. I just went for, uh, for one for right now, but, um, these are, I, yeah, this is going to take too long to get into my hands. I know that even though I have the, the prototype, I, I gotta have that, gotta have that orange one and, and, uh, just, just get that, get that in hand and, and you know, I, I think that's going to be, uh, a pen I carry with me all the time. That's, that's actually one of the, the best things I like about this pen. A lot of fountain pens, you kind of need to be a little bit careful. You know, I don't get too crazy. Um, you know, worrying about overly protecting them, but this, this one looks great, just like, you know, clipped to my jeans pocket or something like that. Like I mentioned in my post this morning, I mean, this is just going to be like a super portable, clip it in your backpack and go, you know, type a pen. And that's, you know, that's, uh, I think one of the huge selling points for me for this pen. Yeah, that's kind of, if, if we do have one reputation, you know, one thing for our reputation is that we make pens that are durable, you know, you could throw them around, you can toss them around, you know, you could, in theory, if you wanted to, you could take this pen and whip it across the parking lot, you know, whip it across the street, go pick it up, it probably has some scratches and dings on it, but you could take the lid off and right with it. Right. Um, and I mean, that's the one thing is, once again, when I was doing my research, I was looking at that titanium nikaya. And so I was doing searches, you know, keyword nikaya. And I've came across the post on the fountain pen network, where somebody had one, a clipless and the lid rolled off their desk, hit the floor and shattered. Oh no. And you just, you just want to cry when you hear these kinds of stories because you, you, you know what that pen means to that person, you know what that pen costs that person as well. And personally, I don't want to have to worry about it, but I also like the look of objects that are worn in. So like, I'm looking forward to having an anodized version of this pen and have it, you know, in a pocket and then it starts to wear through on the corners. Like, I want to see people posting pictures on Instagram of this pen just worn out on the outside. Yeah. And to me, that's the appeal of it, because it's something that you can use, but and even possibly abuse to a certain point, but it's going to stay beautiful. It's just going to get more character like a good, like a leather wallet or something. It's just going to look better with age. Yep. Yep. I think that's exactly right now. I can't wait to get my, my hands on it. And I know a lot of people are, are anxious for it. And I think, I think we'll wrap it up on this note at Tony gun trip on Twitter when I was asking for questions. He didn't have a question, but he posted to me and to Keras Customs and I Mike said, also back to ink, damn you, damn, you're enabling podcast. And I think that sums it up well, all the information, the feedback we get on this. So thanks for being on, Dan. I really appreciate you taking the time. I know you're, this is like right in the peak of the, of the launch for this. So thanks for taking some time to, to chat with us. And Mike, do you have any other questions you wanted to, to get in there? Not a question. I'm going to get an orange one. And I haven't decided, I probably will get orange fountain pen. I've not decided my color for the roller wheel. And I'm going to get the aluminum barrels of both, I think, like the, the grip. Because that's my, my personal favorite. Yep. Why don't you get a green one? I was thinking about green, actually. So that would probably be what I go with. It's an interesting color green. I like it. So I will probably end up going for orange and green because they, well, to be the colors we choose these. Well, here's, here's something that people haven't thought about. But if you order the combo, you can switch the lids and the caps. Okay, done. That will be awesome. Yeah. Oh, yeah, I'm doing, I'm going to do that. Cool. So thanks buddy. Yeah, you've just settled it for me. They will look cool. Oh, that will look great. You should put some pictures on the page. No, I was talking about it today because. Oh, yeah, I was asking for two tone pens. Just about to say, yeah, because people will say, can I have it? No, don't do that. Maybe put on Instagram or something. Yeah. My head would explode if we had two tone pens in addition to all this. Yeah. Chicken. Yeah, I am. Huge, huge chicken. I don't want to lay that egg. Yeah, congratulations. Look, congratulations for, yeah, for getting this plant as far as well. It's incredible. I just wanted to say thank you once again to you guys, to everybody who's, who's helped. Like I said, all the people in the Penn community, Anna, Aziza, Ed, Ivan, Mike Dudek for putting up with my shenanigans and looking at all his pens and everything else. But it feels good. It feels like a community project to me. This feels like Kickstarter should be. It's like a crowdsourced design and it's been embraced by the crowdsourced funding community. So I'm very happy and thank you to everybody. Awesome. Well, we're very happy for you and we're glad to do any little bit we can for great products and great people. So we definitely appreciate your time and we look forward to, I know I'm looking forward with the high anxiety to get this pen. So let's see these 30 days pass and get these babies made. Yes, rock and roll. All right. Well, Dan, where can, where can everyone get in touch with you if they want to ask you more about ink or anything's Keras Customs? Well, they can, they can email me Dan at Keras Customs. I'm also on Instagram myself. It's a design underscore concussion on Instagram and a blog of the same name, but get pretty much I'm all over the place. If there's a, on the Kickstarter project or whatever, if they have a personal question for me, just address it to me personally and I'll get it. So Awesome. Awesome. And you can find me on, on Twitter @doutyism, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M on app.net @douty and blogging away at pan addict.com. Awesome. And I'm Mike. I am Y-K-E. On Twitter, if you want to find the show next to this week's episode, go to 5x5.tv/panalex/85 and we will be back next week for another episode of the show. We will obviously be on, well, not to say obviously, we're on a slight different schedule next week. We'll call it Monday. According Monday next week. So, but there will be a holiday edition. I say that probably won't be anything holiday about it. But we already have a couple of things to talk about. Awesome. That would be fun. So, thanks so much for listening. We'll be back next week. Thank you, Dan. Thank you, Brad. Until next time. Say goodbye, gents. Goodbye, gents.
